902159 - browser.tabs.autohide no longer functions

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 877479

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect)

Description

[Ryan Power]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:23.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/23.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20130730113002

Steps to reproduce:

Updated Firefox to version 23.  There are no changes listed to the tab behavior or preferences in this regard in the release notes located here: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/23.0/releasenotes/


Actual results:

Windows with a single tab open display the tab bar.  browser.tabs.autohide has been set to true.


Expected results:

The tab bar should be hidden when a single tab is displayed.

Comment 1

[mjh563]

This option was removed intentionally (see bug 855370). Actually, it is mentioned in the release notes:

CHANGED: "Load images automatically" and Always show the tab bar" checkboxes removed from preferences and reset to defaults

Comment 3

[Ryan Power]

Looking at the intentional change in 855370, it seems like this was pulled out on a whim.  If a section of the browser breaks your theme, perhaps the theme needs fixing and core features shouldn't be removed.  I can understand if the UI team decides that the checkbox is simply too hideous to have present (even though that tab still contains a barely readable options list with it removed), but at the very least the about:config option should be restored.

Adding additional 'hacks' in though userChrome.css is not an acceptable fix.  If I wanted a browser that looked and behaved like Chrome I'd use Chrome.

I would like this marked as a regression.  Thanks.

Comment 4

[mjh563]

Ryan, I happen to agree with everything you've said, but unfortunately Mozilla is just not interested in what users like you and me think.

Re-open the bug if you want, but previous experience has shown that it's a waste of time trying to argue about decisions like this.

Comment 5

[rsx11m]

Fortunately someone picked up the code and volunteered an extension, see https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/hide-tab-bar-with-one-tab/

Also, various discussions on http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.php?f=49

Comment 6

[Ryan Power]

I'd just like to add before this gets reduped or forced closed:  While it's great that I can restore functionality with addons, I shouldn't have to do that.  A decent number of useful features have been stripped from the browser to meet some sort of vague future UI.  I'd like to list the one's I've been forced to use to keep some sort of similarity:

Clone Window, restores removed functionality that duplicates the current tab/window (or returns a blank window or homepage) when opening a new tab/window.  This used to be a browser setting.

Hide Bar with One Tab, the entire purpose of this bugzilla posting.  Did you get metrics on how many people were hiding single tabs before this change was made?  I know you can infer it NOW based off of the number of people downloading this addon, but that kind of decision should have been looked at BEFORE the feature was removed.

RSS icon in Awesomebar, puts the RSS icon back in the Awesomebar instead of forcing a giant menubar button version.

Status-4-Evar, restores the status bar and indicators.  I'd also like to point out this restores instant link display on mouseover.  Removing that was not only annoying, but quite a large phishing and security risk.  Most users will NOT wait for the delayed link popup before clicking on something.  It's also visually hard to track as the width constantly changes.  This also forced a good number of addons into the menubar, where they should never be.

I'd like people to consider this list.  This is the amount of **** I'd had to search out and install just to get the browser to a stable UI state.  Most people would not be this forgiving, nor would they be willing to spend the time finding addons to fix their problem.  Most people would go back to IE after a update 'broke' their browser.

When I talk to people about Firefox, the first complaints I usually hear are about the giant (although slowly getting better) memory footprint, the slowness and lack of multi-threading, and the constant changes to the UI and look and feel.  Nobody I've talked to say they'd prefer Firefox to look like Chrome, Opera, or IE.  To the enduser, it looks like you're working on fixing these issues by messing with the UI and basically ignoring everything else.  (Wow, social features!  The amount of people demanding that must have been huge.)  If Firefox looks and acts like Chrome, I might as well use Chrome.  It's faster anyway.  :P

Firefox IS the UI, people don't interact with the Javascript parser directly, and when you randomly change features that people are using without good explication you alienate your userbase, anger your contributors and power-users, and punish your fans.  People like Firefox because it's Firefox, not because it's Chrome-lite or IE-inspired.  There's a limit on how much **** people will take before they switch applications entirely.  This isn't some Windows-style monopoly; there are a number of alternatives and switching to them is only as hard as finding their download location.

Comment 7

[Loic]

Keep the discussion on bug 877479 as it's a dupe, thanks.